February 14 2020
Dear Editor,
Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan told a London audience on Sunday that PPP/C Presidential candidate Irfaan Ali was afraid of public and journalistic scrutiny and should start to lead an ‘examined life’. He called on Ali to come clean with the details of his first degree from ‘The University of Uitvulgt’, the source of funds for his ‘$400 million dollar house built with money from relatives abroad-that’s a laugh!’ and much more.
Ramjattan said it would be a ‘disgrace’ if Ali were to be elected President.
He called for a strengthening of the Integrity Commission and said that all legislators should be forced to declare their assets at the beginning and the end of a Parliament. He wanted ‘criminal penalties and incarceration’ for non-declarers. But he was at a loss to explain the non-declarers in the current Cabinet prominent among them Attorney General Basil Williams and Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo. He told his interviewer John Mair at the special Guyana Question Time event in Tooting ‘You better ask them…’
Ramjattan was more forthcoming on the Cummingsburg Two Agreement under which the AFC and APNU were fighting the current general election. That has been shrouded in some secrecy. As leaked, he confirmed that he would not succeed to the Presidency if David Granger demitted office ‘APNU have the right to nominate the Presidential Candidate’. The PMship was his limit.
If the Coalition does win in March, the division of seats would be 70/30 as compared to 60/40 in the last Parliament. The AFC would get 8 seats but that might go up to 12 (the current number) if they won big with forty seats. As now, there would be five AFC Cabinet members post- election. For Ramjattan the Party Leader, the poor AFC results in the 2018 election were just a blip as ‘only 33% voted’.
But, in an important revelation, he said the Coalition would in any future vote of confidence simply walk out and not vote to prevent a repetition of the Charrandass scenario. He reassured the audience in the diaspora and on the live stream from HGPTV ‘I am no Judas!’
Overall Ramjattan was very confident of victory with crowds at rallies bigger than in 2015 especially for the AFC .He denied they had lost votes or face in recent years.
Time and the Guyanese people will tell on March 2nd
Yours faithfully,
John ‘Bill Cotton/Reform’ Mair in London